The past is never dead. It's not even past.

Editor's note: This email was passed on to the Fountain Valley View from Christine Baron, one of the original teacher advisers of the Fountain Valley Student Alliance. The author, who asked to remain anonymous but did agree to the publishing of this letter, was one of the founding members of the Future Good Boys of America, an anti-gay student organization that formed in protest of the Student Alliance. The title of the letter – a quote from William Faulkner – is the author's. The letter has been edited for clarity.

Dear Mrs. Baron,

Your email presents me with quite the dilemma. By speaking with the reporter, I would have the unique opportunity to publicly apologize for what I consider a most shameful scene from my past. Yet it comes at the considerable risk of being portrayed as a bigot, forever preserved in the Register's archive and easily discoverable through the most casual of Internet searches.

As I've matured, both in age and in empathetic understanding, it has become clear to me that I was (am?) a narcissistic expletive, who for no other purpose than attention caused real pain for the students who formed the Alliance as a place of refuge and support. I regret this deeply. Your recollection is perfect: I had no idea what I was doing and quickly wished I was never a part of that fiasco 20 years ago.

I should hasten to add that the whole affair really started out as basically a prank, a stunt of supremely poor taste. ...We were stupid kids. I was about 15 years old, I think, and obviously ignorant of the inherent beauty and value of love in its diverse manifestations.

... I think you remember my family well enough to recall that those were very difficult years for us at FVHS, and it's really a near miracle that all of us eventually graduated high school, went on to college and even grad school. My brother was expelled (about six months before the Alliance controversy), my sister ran away during that same year and I eventually dropped out the next year.

Digging into the past is painful, and because all of us still live in the Orange County area (I'm technically in L.A. County) and are reasonably successful with our own families and careers, I don't think it is fair to them for me to risk renewed notoriety for our family by discussing how stupid I was many years ago. I might want to do a mea culpa for my own guilt, but that would be selfish. The past may not be dead, but I'm inclined to see if we can keep it buried alive for the time being.

The most surprising aspect of the whole tragedy was the quick response of the national religious associations, descending on FVHS with speed and purpose, hinting at the tactics of grass-roots mobilization that the "religious right" in later years would nearly perfect.

At the height of the affair, I remember attending a special religious service one evening, hosted at a local church, and the keynote speaker was the national director of some religious group who strongly advocated against homosexuality in the most blatant terms. ...

The bile this guy spewed was very different from any conception of Christianity that I was familiar with, and it was apparent that we ... had unleashed some uncontrollable force of Puritanism on poor Fountain Valley. What a lesson in the politics of religion and sexuality that was!

... I do deeply regret any pain I caused to the students who formed the Alliance. I learned a valuable lesson about the diversity of human experience, in love and life, and I was changed by the encounter.

The link between intolerance and suicide

• Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among young people ages 10-24.

• LGB youth are four times more likely, and questioning youth are three times more likely, to attempt suicide as their straight peers.

• Nearly half of young transgender people have seriously thought about taking their lives, and one-quarter report having made a suicide attempt.

• LGB youth who come from highly rejecting families are 8.4 times as likely to have attempted suicide as LGB peers who reported no or low levels of family rejection.

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FOUNTAIN VALLEY – When Cassidy Lynn Campbell became Orange County's first transgender homecoming queen last month, she collapsed in tears as celebratory balloons and students' cheers rose up around her on the Marina High School football field.

“They chose me,” Campbell would say of her peers at a news event after the awards ceremony. “That's what means more to me than anything.”

But Campbell's Cinderella moment would not last long. Within minutes, Twitter was aflame with hurtful remarks, and hours after Campbell made Orange County history, her makeup was streaked with tears.

As those insensitive tweets demonstrate, Campbell's win does not signal an end to LGBT discrimination in Orange County. But it does show how far the county has come with regard to LGBT and transgender acceptance.

In honor of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History Month – which included National Coming Out Day on Oct. 11 – here is a look back 20 years, to what is arguably one of the most important moments in Orange County history for LGBT youth.

In October 1993, a group of students at Fountain Valley High School formed the Fountain Valley Student Alliance, Orange County's first gay and lesbian support group on a high school campus. The idea was to provide a forum for gay, lesbian and straight students to share their feelings openly and not be judged or bullied for being different.

The unofficial club provoked massive controversy. Parents and students held multiple protests. An anti-gay student group called the Future Good Boys of America was formed to intimidate the Alliance. The issue eventually went before the school board to determine whether the club could continue to meet.

The Alliance became a cultural touchstone, with the American Civil Liberties Union lending its support and the Traditional Values Coalition expressing its condemnation.

Today, many LGBT kids have benefited from the trail blazed by the Alliance. Two-thirds of all public high schools now have a support group on campus.

COMING OUT

Ron and Don Katz have the same last name. They look the same. They even talk the same. So when Ron came out as gay in 1993, at the end of his junior year at Fountain Valley High, the question on everyone's mind was: Is Ron's twin brother gay, too?

Turns out, he was. He just didn't realize it yet.

Don was struggling with his sexuality, he said by phone 20 years after he came out as gay.

“But everyone wanted an answer, so I had to figure it out pretty quickly,” he recalled.

As a junior, Ron had written about being gay in his college application essay, essentially outing himself to his teacher, counselor and classmates.

The brothers were interested in the idea of starting a support group that would provide a safe, supportive environment where gay, straight and questioning students could share their stories and be heard without fear of rejection.

“We knew it would be an adjustment for the school to welcome this sort of organization, but we didn't expect the reaction we received,” Ron said, also by phone. The two brothers now live in New York.

The Student Alliance started up without much fanfare. The group was small – fewer than 10 members – and met quietly in a teacher's classroom every Friday at lunch.

Then one day, Ron and Don came to school to discover a number of students passing out anti-gay fliers in the parking lot. The group of mostly boys was protesting the activities of the Student Alliance.

“It was a statement to the school,” recalled James Fuller, who helped found the Future Good Boys of America.

“A lot of them thought we were bigots and hate-mongers. … We continued to tell them we were fighting this on a Christian foundation,” Fuller said in a phone interview.

The Katz brothers were livid.

“I'm sure there were people that wanted to attend that didn't because they felt they couldn't go (to the meetings) safely,” Ron said.

According to Alliance co-founder Jennifer Tang, a “feeling of hatred” permeated the campus.

Good Boys would sit in on Alliance meetings with audio recorders and intimidating looks. They started wearing T-shirts with the letters FGBA on the front and the words No Gays with a line through them on the back.

There were rumors that FGBA secretly stood for Future Gay Bashers of America. While the former Good Boys deny this, it's not surprising how such rumors got started.

“I would hit a kid with a baseball bat just because he is gay,” a 17-year-old Greg Tillman told the Register in 1993.

When the Register reached Tillman 20 years later, he described his involvement with the Good Boys as a form of “screwing around and having fun.”

“It was a reason to smoke weed and ditch school,” he said.

There were never any instances of physical violence during the Alliance controversy, but anti-gay slurs were thrown around liberally and Alliance members were careful not to walk alone through certain parts of campus.

Despite the intimidation, the Alliance continued to meet every Friday at lunch. At its height, the group had about 40 members, most of whom were straight.

“I felt like I was doing the right thing,” said Tang, who is straight but joined the club with her boyfriend at the time, who was bisexual. “We weren't going to let a group like the Future Good Boys win this battle.”

The harassment scared people, but it also brought the group closer, Ron Katz said.

“It made us stronger.”

AN UNLIKELY ALLY

Mike Henigan heard his fair share of homophobic one-liners during his 12-year stint as Fountain Valley's assistant varsity football coach, but they didn't bother him that much. Then his son Patrick came out as gay.

Henigan's first reaction was shock. Patrick Henigan was an all-league offensive lineman for Fountain Valley's star football team. He was in student government. He was a member of the homecoming court. His 4.2 grade-point average helped earn him a football scholarship to Harvard.

Henigan's second reaction was fear. The year was 1991, and the AIDS epidemic was decimating the gay community. In 1988, there were 21,000 AIDS-related deaths. In 1990, the year before Patrick came out to his parents, the annual death rate had jumped by 50 percent.

Patrick gave his parents some books to read, and over the next few months, they gradually came around. But the couple kept their son's sexuality a secret.

“We accepted him, but we were kind of in the closet,” Mike Henigan recalled. “At that time, we didn't have the courage. We had no reason to.”

But then the Student Alliance controversy flared up, and homosexuality became a common topic of conversation – and the brunt of the occasional joke, even in the faculty lounge.

One day, Henigan overheard a group of teachers making derogatory remarks about gay people during lunch. He felt he no longer could keep quiet.

“I said, ‘Well, what if that happened to be my son? What would you do then?'” he remembered saying.

The table became completely silent.

From that moment on, Henigan became an outspoken champion of the Student Alliance. He and his wife arranged to speak at the next meeting.

At this point, the Good Boys had started attending – and recording – the Alliance meetings. Henigan remembers the confused look on their faces when they walked in to the meeting and saw the former football coach and current athletic director sitting there.

His support was a major coup for the beleaguered club.

“It definitely kept the jocks on the right side of the table,” co-founder Ron Katz recalled. “They were either ‘pro' or just quiet.”

The controversy surrounding the Alliance by this time was national news.

More than 100 parents signed a petition calling for the ouster of the club from campus, and the issue went before trustees of the Huntington Beach Union High School District.

The Los Angeles Times ran an op-ed calling for the school board to affirm the students' right to meet, and the ACLU stepped in to help the Alliance make their case before the board.

According to the Equal Access Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1984, schools cannot choose which non-academic student organizations can meet on campus. The trustees had to decide whether the district would continue its equal-access policy, which allowed noncurriculum-based groups to meet on campus at lunch and before and after school.

If they banned the Student Alliance, they would have to ban the district's 67 other nonschool-related clubs.

So many people showed up to the first board meeting that a second public hearing was held before a decision was made.

More than 120 people voiced their opinions, but the most memorable moment came when Mike Henigan stepped in front of the podium, according to Christine Baron, the student adviser and a teacher at the school.

“When he spoke, you just felt like you were really a part of something big,” Baron recalled. “It was kind of like a movie, him talking about how his views changed when his son came out.”

Henigan read a letter that his son Patrick had written to the board. In it, Patrick talked about how he had felt worthless in high school, despite all of his accomplishments.

Like a lot of people in Orange County, Patrick wrote, his understanding of homosexuality was informed by negative stereotypes – stereotypes with which his teenage self did not identify.

“In the midst of praise and admiration, I wanted my life to end,” Henigan said, reading his son's words. “I believe, or should I say know with certainty, that education and support for gay individuals as well as their families and friends saves lives.”

The board voted 4-1 to continue the equal-access policy, and the Alliance was allowed to stay.

THE ALLIANCE'S LEGACY

The board's decision affected more than the students at Fountain Valley. The publicity surrounding the protests and the board meetings put the Student Alliance on the national media circuit, and students from around Orange County took notice.

Within weeks, O.C.'s second gay and lesbian high school support group was started at Huntington Beach High. Those students had been inspired by the Alliance's story and sought the group's advice for holding meetings on their own campus.

Alliance members were honored at the Orange County Federation of Lesbian, Gay and AIDS organizations, and the gay magazine Blade asked them to appear on its cover.

Henigan was invited to speak at Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays and to attend the first Gay Games in New York. Tang, inspired by her first taste of social activism, moved to the San Francisco Bay area and now works as an aide for U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer.

The Fountain Valley Student Alliance is still around, although it now calls itself the Gay-Straight Alliance. The club has 25 members who meet weekly to discuss LGBT issues and promote greater awareness and acceptance of minority groups.

Next week, the group is celebrating Ally Week, when the club encourages all students to sign a pledge not to discriminate against difference. Each spring, the group holds a Day of Silence, with some students walking around with tape over their mouths to call attention to minority groups that do not have a voice because of discrimination or fear of bullying.

Kenneth Barrios, a junior who has been involved with the group since he was a freshman, said anti-gay harassment at Fountain Valley is not a problem.

“The GSAs, one, make it more comfortable for still-closeted LGBT youth to come out and, two, educate people that don't know much about the LGBT community,” he said. “They create a bridge so that we can know each other better and so that tensions between people of different sexual orientations can work together.”

Today, there are about 50 gay-straight alliances on high school campuses in Orange County, according to Stephanie Van Dyke, a youth leader at The Center OC, an LGBT advocacy group in Santa Ana.

“They create a bold visibility where youth can find a connection with other LGBT students and allies that are there to help create safer spaces,” she said.

Greater acceptance of LGBT students means some kids are coming out earlier, Van Dyke said.

An eighth-grader in Aliso Viejo is lobbying his school's administration to allow him to start an alliance on campus, she said. If he is successful, it would be Orange County's first alliance at a middle school.

“It's amazing to see how brave these youth are,” Van Dyke said. “They're out – and they're not taking any crap for it.”

VOICES

“I got involved because I faced bullying through middle school and I didn’t want that to happen through high school. It’s amazing. You’re able to talk to people that know what you’re going through and they’re very accepting. Without a club like this, I feel I wouldn’t know that many people.”

– Brandon Ha, a junior, came out as gay in 6th grade

Kenneth Barrios is a junior that came out as gay in middle school

“Being in this club has given me a lot of leadership skills and social skills that I’d been lacking. I’ve been able to open up to more people, to talk to people without the fear of being judged or ridiculed. “

– Kenneth Barrios, a junior, came out in middle school

“Some people don’t understand that you don’t have to be gay to be in the gay-straight alliance. But the S in GSA stands for straight. After joining, I realized why sister was so quiet and reserved when she was younger. I wanted to show my support not just for my sister but for anyone that feels silenced.”

– Alyx Merickel, a senior, is straight but was inspired by her gay older sister to join the GSA

Nov. 22, 1993: Students protest the creation of the Fountain Valley Student Alliance, Orange County's first gay-straight alliance. FILE PHOTO: DAVE YODER, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Students at Fountain Valley High School skip class Nov. 22, 1993, to protest the creation of the Fountain Valley Student Alliance, Orange County's first gay-straight alliance. Today, two-thirds of high schools in the county have an LGBT support group on campus. FILE PHOTO: DAVE YODER, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Nov. 22, 1993: Students protest the creation of the Fountain Valley Student Alliance, Orange County's first gay-straight alliance. FILE PHOTO: DAVE YODER, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Students and parents cheered during a Huntington Beach School District meeting in early 1994. After listening to seventy speakers from a large, vocal crowd, the trustees voted 4-1 to continue the equal-access policy that allowed the Fountain Valley Student Alliance, Orange County's first LGBT support group at a high school, to meet on campus. FILE PHOTO: ANA VENEGAS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Daylin Joseph, 14, left, and Giselle Barrios, 15, mug it up for the camera during a gathering of Fountain Valley High School's Gay-Straight Alliance. Both are straight, as are about half of the group's 25 members, according to the group's president, Alyx Merickel. CINDY YAMANAKA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
The mood is light as Fountain Valley High School's Gay-Straight Alliance plans an upcoming social outing, perhaps to Knott's Scary Farm. Last year's president, Alyx Merickel, left, is straight and was inspired to join the group by her older sister is gay and benefited greatly from the club's support. CINDY YAMANAKA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Janet Marquez, advisor for Fountain Valley High School's Gay-Straight Alliance, left, is excited about fundraising ideas during a brainstorming session Monday. Alyx Merickel, who is straight, was the group's president last year. CINDY YAMANAKA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Brandon Ha, 16, right, explains,''Without the Alliance, I'd be less open and more secluded. This club is loving, not competitive.. a family." Ha says, "I love you, bye" to members as they leave. Kenneth Barrios, 16, left, and Brianna Hendrix, 14, share laughs at Fountain Valley High. CINDY YAMANAKA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Identical twins Don and Ron Katz started Orange County's first gay-straight alliance at Fountain Valley High School in 1993. Don went on to start a wine bar in Irvine after a bout of meningitus left him legally blind in 2001. Ron earned an MBA and PhD in neuroscience and today works as a technology liscensing officer at Columbia University's Medical Center. COURTESY OF RON AND DON KATZ
Clockwise from left: Adrienne and Mike Henigan visited Jersey Shore this summer with their son Patrick and his daughter, Julianne. Patrick's coming out as gay two years before the Student Alliance was formed in 1993 turned Adrienne and Mike into two of the club's staunchest supporters. COURTESY OF MIKE AND ADRIENNE HENIGAN
Robert Dodge, a senior at Fountain Valley High in 1993, started the Future Good Boys of America to oppose the Fountain Valley Student Alliance. He spoke in front of the school board several times and staged protests opposing the LGBT support group, the first of its kind in Orange County. "School is not a place for the immoral behavior of homosexuals," he told the Register 20 years ago. CHARLAINE BROWN, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
A student at Fountain Valley High School resists her mother, who tries to pull her away from an anti-gay protest held outside the school in 1993. FILE PHOTO: DAVE YODER, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Alyx Merickel is a senior who is straight but was inspired by her gay older sister to join the GSA "Some people don't understand that you don't have to be gay to be in the gay-straight alliance. But the S in GSA stands for straight. After joining, I realized why sister was so quiet and reserved when she was younger. I wanted to show my support not just for my sister but for anyone that feels silenced." CINDY YAMANAKA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Kenneth Barrios is a junior that came out as gay in middle school "Being in this club has given me a lot of leadership skills and social skills that I'd been lacking. I've been able to open up to more people, to talk to people without the fear of being judged or ridiculed. " CINDY YAMANAKA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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